Working Group on Disasters

The Working Group on Disasters aims to foster greater awareness, collaboration, and research activity among social, physical, and behavioral scientists at Cornell and around the world in the study of international disaster preparedness, recovery, and resilience.

Whether natural or manmade, disasters always result from the interaction of human and environmental factors, and disaster risk and recovery always have social, cultural, and political dimensions. To improve individual and collective responses and public policy, it is crucially important to enlist the theories, methodologies, and insights of social and behavioral sciences.

Sharon Tennyson, professor of policy analysis and management and coordinator of the Einaudi Center's Working Group on Disasters, has received a faculty fellowship for the social sciences, humanities, and the arts from Cornell's David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

The in-residence fellowship, which covers spring semester 2019, provides Tennyson with teaching leave and a small research budget, as well as opportunities to engage with a broad, interdisciplinary audience on and off campus, according to the Atkinson Center's announcement.

Fellowships are intended to encourage recipients to pursue "transdisciplinary dialogue" with collaborators beyond the university, including social movements, NGOs, or local communities.

Jack Elliott (design and environmental analysis) and Kathryn March (anthropology, emerita) led a discussion on Sept. 7, 2018 on their work with communities devastated by the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal.

Roundtable: Effects on Critical Infrastructure

A roundtable on April 12, 2018 featured Thomas O'Rourke of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell. O'Rourke has authored or co-authored more than 360 publications on geotechnical, underground, earthquake engineering, and impact of extreme events on civil infrastructure.

University of Florida anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith launched the Working Group on Disasters on March 14, 2018 with a lecture titled “The Social Construction of Disasters: Identifying Root Causes and Risk Drivers.” Read the Cornell Chronicle article about his visit here.